Diana Clark: At Least It Will Be Mine

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Gardening

I have fertilized the space between my thighs well, my fingers wet 

with a hard day’s work. I have plowed, my earth upturned again 

and again, ready for its sowing. When my partner slides his penis into 

my garden, I know his seed will sink deep into the soil of me, warm and pink 

as a summer’s early rain. Soon—according, at least, to

The Old Farmer’s Almanac—my own cock will grow in good 

time. Once it sprouts, shoots into adulthood, the process of germination 

complete, I do not expect the blue ribbon, a showstopper, an award 

for my labor or shine. I anticipate bruises, a barrage of broken

blossoms, the bees that come to harvest and leave me red 

welted and dry. But at least, that little pink gourd,

at least it will be mine.

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Diana Clark is an alumni of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where they graduated with an MFA in fiction. A recipient of the LGBTQ+ Writer Scholarship for The Muse & The Marketplace 2019, and a 2015 alumni of Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki and Thasos, their work can be found or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust + Moth, Lunch Ticket, Longleaf Review, and more. You can find them reading about pirates in North Carolina with their cat, Emily D.